crafterm's weblog

Enable High Memory Support!

If your machine has more than 1gig of RAM and you're running linux don't forget to enable high memory support for 1-4 gig RAM machines. I just noticed that my new Dell was only using 1 of it's 2gig RAM (!)

Under Processor type and features, set (4GB) High Memory Support

Quick kernel recompile fixed this though :)

top - 15:41:12 up 5 min,  3 users,  load average: 0.41, 0.33, 0.14
Tasks:  84 total,   2 running,  82 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):   1.0% user,   0.0% system,   0.0% nice,  99.0% idle
Mem:   2069208k total,   311332k used,  1757876k free,    23680k buffers
Swap:  3903784k total,        0k used,  3903784k free,   154280k cached

iPod & Griffin iTrip!

After getting my hands on a 40gig iPod a few weeks ago I can't seem to let it go! Every day I'm uploading more and more music to the device and listening to it more :)

Purchasing the Griffin iTrip FM transmitter (review) was also definitely worthwhile, this accessory has so many uses. Over the weekend I was able listen to music in the car, use my iPod as a hifi remote control around the house, control the car stereo while having a picnic in the park, awesome :)

Debian Installer!

Last week I took delivery of a new Dell Dimension 4600 for work. Quite a nice machine, 3gig, 2gig, 120gig with a nice 17" flatscreen TFT :)

After powering it up, I started reinstalling the software on it to turn it into a dual boot development box. To install Linux I tried out the new Debian GNU/Linux Installer (beta3) and it worked out quite well. There 2 CD images, one including the base system (100mb), and one without (30mb). I downloaded the 100mb image, burn't it to CD on my notebook and booted it on the new system.

The installation menus are similar to the current 'woody' installer but a few things are different, notably the ability to configure LVM during partitioning, grub as the default bootloader, a 2.4 kernel by default (woody used to boot a 2.2 kernel by default), and (at least on this machine) quite good hardware recognition.

After partitioning and installing the base system, it rebooted the machine and went into package selection. For me, I usually apt-get the packages I want over the network when I need them, so I skipped this stage and was able to log in and start using the freshly installed system.

Was certainly much easier than last year when I installed Debian on other Dimension 4600 machines we'd ordered. I ended up having to install woody, build a new kernel package (available here), install it, and then update to sid to get everything working properly due to the newer hardware Dell had used and the kernel support in the woody installer.

Kudos to the Debian Installer guys, looking forward to seeing this in sid.

Office move is complete!

Our office move is finally complete. Last week we started the packing of boxes, etc and on friday made the trip from Mainzer Landstrasse to Schaefergasse to our new premises.

Over the weekend we refitted our servers, desks, PC's, etc, and today Deutsche Telekom finally connected our internet connection back online at full speed.

Houston... The eagle has landed! :)

Maven, jar files and revision control

On one of my recent projects I started to use Maven as our build tool rather than ant, as to take advantage of those extra reports and logs Maven can generate via it's plugins.

I found it really cool that it can download dependent jar files directly over the internet but then I wondered, how do people track the history of their dependent jar files as they won't be kept in CVS, etc?

I know people generally abhor checking jar files into CVS as they are binary files, etc, and I can understand this, however if you don't check them in, how can you roll back and build a project released a year ago that used version 1.1 of some dependency that is now up to version 1.5?

Or will Maven's repository keep all known versions of all software forever?

Any thoughts?

Welcome Torsten!

Torsten started with us at ManageSoft yesterday, welcome mate, it's great to have you on board!!

iPod Linux!

Bern has just been slashdott'ed again for his work on getting Linux running on the iPod! Top stuff mate! :)

Moving Office!

This week is 'moving office week', tomorrow we close the doors of our old ManageSoft office in Mainzer Landstrasse, and open the new doors in the Schaefergasse.

Our new office premises is great, it's much larger than the old one, and in a much nicer part of town. The Schaefergasse is near Konstablerwache, which is on the Zeil, Frankfurt's shopping district.

And.. it's only a few hundred meters away from where I live! :)